big bend '98 trip, continued

back on the road, jeff found some girls on a sidewalk who seemed to be 12 years old. we continued on our trip, however, and ended up in fort davis a little while later. first we drove through and found a campsite in the davis mountains state park, and then we drove back to fort davis to visit the historical site. it started off seeming an ordinary and slightly boring visit (the slideshow offered little entertainment), and we quickly figured we would merely make a walk around half of the grounds and then catch something to eat in town. we made our first stop at the commanding officer's quarters, where a woman who was dressed for the occasion (whatever occasion it was) told us of a mystery we could solve. she also told us that it was usually only for little kids, but that it was a tough one for little kids, so we took her up on the offer. the mystery, or detective game, required us to go to 18 locations in the site and answer little riddles. most of them were as easy as counting the number of chesspieces on a board in one of the rooms. we answered the question for the commanding officer's quarters and went outside, where it had started raining. the woman inside jumped up and down for joy, saying they hadn't had rain since last year. the rain stopped and we continued the detective game from building to building, racking up the answers. up above we saw dark clouds approaching from the west. we went into the commissary to answer a question about soap (it cost 5 cents in 1870), and as we stepped outside we saw an ominous cloud of red from the south. the wind began to pick up, and it started raining again. the red cloud became dark and dusty, and it came upon us after a few minutes. we stayed inside the commissary, unsure what to expect from the cloud. however, we realized the site would not stay open much longer, and we needed to get the rest of the answers, or at least get back to the visitor's center. so we ran out into the storm and were pelted with hard rain and blown sideways by a strong swirling wind. we got the next answer and returned to the commissary. the storm seemed to let off a bit, so we ran back out to the visitor's center. once we got inside, we remembered we still had about 4 more to answer, so paul and I ran out to get the two questions that we could get to without being bombarded again, and jeff made some purchases at the store. the ranger running the visitor's center helped us with the remaining questions, and after several bumbling errors, we solved the mystery. it was one of those puzzles where you have to fill out the letters in a sentence by using their corresponding numbers. this particular puzzle spelled out--well, I shouldn't tell you, that would be too easy. if you want to know what it said, you'll have to go to fort davis and do it yourself. I mean, they gave us all patches for solving the puzzle, all you'd have to do is fill it out fast and get a patch, without doing any work for it! that wouldn't be fair.

we left the historical site and drove across the road to get some food at pop's grill, formerly tj's country burgers (where we got dinner four years ago). jeff became infatuated with the girl running the counter, and desperately wanted to take a picture with her. he hadn't brought a camera (for reasons unknown). paul had his camera with him, but refused to take a picture of her, because his 'mom might start wondering' about it. my camera was back in the truck, and it was still windy and stormy out, so I told jeff he could get it himself, but he didn't want to. (afterwards he would blame us for not taking a picture). as we waited for our food, we opened our national parks trading cards (to find out who got what, you'll have to go look for yourself. I don't even remember which ones I got, let alone jeff and paul), and jeff listened intently to the cook's shouting to the counter girl so he could find out her name. it was hard to hear, but he and paul had it narrowed down to either cathy or jackie. gradually we accepted her name as cathy, and paul and I got in plenty jokes about jeff and cathy. our food came, and they forgot to leave off the mustard on my burger (I specifically ordered it plain and dry, and cathy looked at me strange and wrote that down, so it should have been plain and dry). I forced it down, because I didn't feel like making an issue out of it (though jeff insisted I didn't return it because I was in love with cathy, so I reminded him that he was the one getting obsessed.) we were finishing up our meal when a school bus arrived full of senior citizens. they packed the place, I mean there wasn't a table left empty once they got there. an old lady couldn't eat all of her burger, so she gave us the remaining half, even though we told her we didn't want it. (the next day, paul threw it out).

we left the restaurant and I begged jeff to drive back to the "downtown" area--i had seen the city hall and instantly recognized it from the film Dancer Texas, Pop. 81 (which is actually a good movie, I recommend it to all of you that can appreciate films about small town life). I took some pictures, and we went to a convenience store (actually they called it a thrifty mart or something like that) where jeff got gas and paul and I looked for bathrooms with toilet paper (they didn't have any--paper, that is). inside the store, I saw the park ranger that had helped us through the mystery.

we returned to the davis mountains state park and decided to drive up a mountain road to a scenic overlook. jeff and I had been up it before, it was where we ate our astronaut ice cream that made us wonder how the astronauts made it back to earth alive (incidentally we didn't look for any astronaut ice cream this time around). it was really windy, that is to say, I got out of the truck to take a picture when I realized it was really windy. the storm hadn't left, but it was mostly windy and not rainy at this point. we drove on over to another scenic overlook and picnic area that looked out over the historical site (and apparently there is a trail that leads from that overlook to the historical site, but we haven't been on it). there was a stone tower along the way, we ran up it and hastily returned to the truck because of the cold wind.

we went back to our campsite and found it in ruin--the makeshift towel rack that jeff and paul had constructed earlier was trashed, and my bathing suit was across the campsite. the tent would have blown over and perhaps away if we had not put all our stuff in it before we left--most of the pegs had come out of the ground and the tent was trying to blow away with our stuff. we loaded it up with rocks--all along the inside edges, as well as on each of the pegs and the corners.

after jeff drove up to the indian lodge (hotel rooms in the state park for those wusses that can't handle mother nature) to call his mom to reassure her that we were okay (for surely there had been some news back in s.a. about the storms in west texas), we returned to the tent for the night. it was still kind of early for us to go to bed, yet it was really dark and windy, with the occasional drizzle of rain. so we played cards for some time--and got stuck in a really really long game of war that was played mainly by paul and jeff (I fell out early on, in sharp contrast with the outcome of the previous night's games in which I won every game). paul and jeff decided to play the game for cathy--the winner would get cathy as his prize. though jeff seemed determined enough, the game went to paul, and we joked about jeff and cathy some more. the game of war tires early, but even so, we kept playing for some time after it had become old, and we went to sleep. we woke up in the night at the sound of something in the bushes near our tent--it sounded like people, but there weren't any voices. as it turned out, they were deer--maybe 4 feet from our tent.

the next morning we folded up the tent and loaded everything back into the truck and drove off to the mcdonald observatory. jeff almost hit a deer on the way (rather it almost hit him, came out of nowhere, really). in the visitor's center, I discovered a hidden talent of solving those puzzle games where you move squares around and around in the hopes of making one big picture. somehow or another I was able to do every puzzle I came across, to paul's great amazement (jeff seemed most uninterested). we watched a brief video presentation on the observatory and attended the solar viewing. there was an annoying kid that was afraid of technology and wouldn't shut up--so the tour guide asked the kid to help him move the telescope's focus or whatever. why is it tour guides do that? they pick the most annoying and unappreciative little kids to do all the cool stuff, and the kids don't want to do it, so they yell and scream and pee in their pants all because they don't want to hold a remote control and push some buttons.

we took the shuttle up to mt locke, home of the 81 and 110 inch telescopes. 4 years ago, the tour took us to the 110, because the 81 is the older of the two and not open to the public. as luck would have it, the 110 was being maintenanced (something about resilvering the lens), so they took us into the 81! before they let us in, we saw swarms of ladybugs (filling paul with pleasure). we got to ride up in this ancient elevator that scared the crap out of the annoying kid who somehow got dragged into this tour as well. it was freezing inside the observatory, and the tour guide seemed afraid to move the telescope too much (apparently he's broken something before, he said something about accidentally opening up some liquid nitrogen). the tour guide that showed us the telescopes was not the same one who ran the solar viewing, nor was he the same guide we had 4 years ago. 4 years ago, our tour guide was mary, and she let jeff's brother tim move the 110 inch telescope. (jeff and I used to joke about having to return to mcdonald observatory because of her). after the annoying kid screamed and hollered because the tour guide moved the telescope 5 inches, we got into the bus where paul found a new friend (a ladybug he named cathy). they shuttled us over to the new (and still in construction) hobby-eberly telescope, a 300 something inch telescope composed of 90 something identical spherically curved, hexagonally shaped mirrors that make up a honeycomb of a lens. there wasn't a whole lot we could do there, since it was still being built (they're missing about 10 mirrors still), so the tour guide led us back to the welcome center to the hobby-eberly telescope where we had a discussion about lots of astronomical things. he talked to us about red shift and blue shift, and how blue is actually hot and red is in reality cold. (that blew the minds of lots of people there). we left the welcome center and paul said goodbye to cathy, and she flew away.

when the tour was over, we went back to the visitor's center, jeff bought some stuff for his brother, and paul and I bought some postcards. (speaking of postcards, we still hadn't sent any out to anyone yet--let alone write any). we had lunch at the same picnic area from 4 years ago where jeff's dad coined his phrase "I hope they have breaks" for every car that came driving down the sloping road. after some discussion, we drove back to fort davis to get last minute supplies and so jeff could say goodbye to cathy at pop's grill. jeff drove up to the drive-thru, and ordered drinks for us. unfortunately for jeff, cathy was not working. jeff asked for cathy, and the girl working the window made a funny face and said, "we don't have a cathy here"--and after a minute, to our surprise, she said, "but there is a khaki." (note: i don't know the real spelling of the name, but by sound, it sounds just like khaki as in pants.) we drove off and laughed for a good long time over that one, we'd never heard of anyone by the name of khaki, and it was funny that we thought her name was cathy (but it explained why paul thought they were saying jackie), and I guess the whole situation was just silly altogether or something. at any rate, we had a good laugh. jeff said his farewell to khaki (onto the tape journal for those of you who want to hear it), and we took off, north towards I-10.

not much can be said of I-10 in west texas. it's really boring. really drab and dull. the landscape is the same for about 200 miles or so, and it just doesn't get very interesting at all. paul fell asleep (and I don't blame him), leaving me in charge of the roadkill count (which was a joke, since I was the only one on the trip who wasn't spotting the roadkill). jeff and I played our new made-up game to pass the time all the way home. it's like that game with out-of-state plates where you look for the first number and punch someone that many times, only without the hitting, and you have to think of words. in our new and mildly entertaining game, you take the first letter and first number on an out-of-state plate, and make words as many letters long as the number starting with the letter. you can't add an s to make the word fit the number of required letters, and no proper nouns are allowed. actually the game kept us entertained for a long time, but we soon realized that there weren't enough out-of-state plates, so we resorted to using texas plates as well. we also came across a lot of plates with 1 or 2 as the first letter, so we just ignored them, as well as all the X and Q plates.

we came to junction, texas, and ate dinner at dairy queen. I finished up my postcards after dinner, and since I only had one address for the 5 or 6 cards I had to mail, I could only mail the one. it took us a good 10 minutes to find the post office (it's hidden, I swear), and we got to cross a neat bridge. but even the trivialities of our time in junction couldn't keep us from getting back home that night. the rest of the trip was pretty much the same as the preceding part of I-10 (the landscape still wasn't very good) and it was getting dark. jeff and I gave up on the plates game, and we stopped for gas at a real savory convenience store. I had to use the bathroom, and since they had a sign up that said the bathroom was for "paying customers ONLY" I felt obligated to buy something, so I bought two losing scratch lotto tickets. the guy behind the counter didn't believe I was 18, and is forever an idiot in my memory. we got back on the road and there were no more stops until we got to paul's house. paul said his goodbyes (he left for utah the following monday, for the whole summer) and we were off. jeff dropped me off at my house and we said our farewells, jeff went home, and the trip was over.

where are we all now? well, I have since become employed at the wooden nickel company, jeff has applied for the gas attendant position at HEB, and paul is being educated at BYU. jeff and I remain in contact as usual, and recently I received email from paul in utah. I have played a little phone tag with sal, and as of this writing have not been able to talk with him due to work schedules. jeff and I have run into jon a few times since the trip, though he's been in and out of town, and is leaving again a few days after I finish typing this up. so in a way, the trip may have been our last time together--and only three of us at that. is this the end of the jonny g men, and the jonny 5? I can only hope not, but I think it will be a long time before all of us are reunited once again. however, the trip was a lot of fun, full of loads of memories that will no doubt lead jeff and I to return once more to that wonderful land west of the pecos.

wd
7/4/98

Here is what Paul had to say about what you just read:
Hey will thanks for that amazing account of our trip to big bend and i have to say that is was an accurate account except for three things. One I wasn't drooling over the first park attendent it was mainly Jeff. Second there were 102 cars in the train and finally the road kill count hit 151. Thanks though for a great story.
Paul

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